You are sixteen years old, your twin sister just had a miscarriage two days prior, and your mother is taking you both to the gynecologist for the first time. The sound of your heartbeat pounding in your ears envelops the male doctor’s words as he pokes and prods between your open, shaking thighs. You’ve only had sex a handful of times and you’re still thoroughly uncomfortable with a strange man standing between your open legs, looking closely inside of you. You stare at a poster promoting STD screenings and try to fight the urge to slam your knees closed and jump off the table, paper gown and all. The gynecologist tells you the size of your cervix and the tightness of your birth canal will make it impossible for you to ever get pregnant or carry children. The nurse tells you that at least you might be skinny forever. You never thought about having children before. Sure, maybe one or two after marriage. But now you’re told you can’t. It’s a shock that forces your mouth closed tight enough to accept it. It won’t be until you are twenty years old that a female gynecologist explains that, while what your male doctor said was true about the shape of your body, “impossible” is a severe exaggeration. “Your body is different and difficult,” she says.

You spend the next couple years sleeping with men, and boys, and boys on the cusp of manhood who tell you they’re “clean” and ask if you’re on birth control. You tell them it won’t be  a problem, and they use your body in a different way than you use theirs.

You are eighteen years old, lying in a twin sized bed next to the boy you started dating a month ago. You’ve been sleeping together for two months longer, but all of your friends kept asking if you were official and you finally shrugged and said, “Sure.” He makes you laugh deep inside your belly, laughs you’ve never before let escape your lips. You have enjoyed the last couple months with him despite, or maybe because of,  your father shooting himself when you returned home for Thanksgiving three months prior, and the crippling anxiety that you’ll be exactly like him one day. The fear you will inherit a venomous tongue, quick fists, and a brain that cannot comprehend happiness. The fear that you will push away anyone who loves you.

Eight years before you are born, your fourteen-year-old mother gives birth to your half sister so someone might finally love her unconditionally. Your mother is still a child herself, and yet she has already been handed a whole other being to take care of and protect. She cradles your sister in her arms and promises to be the mother she never had.

You are eighteen years old, lying in bed with your boyfriend. He kisses your neck before climbing down from your top bunk paradise to walk to his physics class. You stay in bed, not because you haven’t gone to your French class all quarter, but because you feel something. You feel something only your mother has described. That feeling that you just know something is about to happen. Like the deafening silence before the shot of a gun signaling the beginning of a race. To your mother, that feeling was everything. You interpret that feeling as something foreign and wrong inside your body. You put on clothes to trudge the block and a half to the Walgreens where you usually only buy alcohol with the fake ID your aunt bought you. You plead with your body to keep the deep red blush from migrating to your face as you hand the male clerk the box, pay, and rush back to your dorm as quickly as possible. You say a prayer to a god you stopped talking to years ago.

You are eight years old. You attend a church with your mother where they tell you a woman’s greatest blessing and duty is to bring forth life into the world. That you are obligated by God to have children to spread the Holy Word. You are confused because your mother has always told you that you don’t ever have to have babies if you don’t want to. You remember a year ago when she explained how her friend, Miss Rose, was pregnant and then wasn’t. It was nobody’s business but Miss Rose’s. Your mother nods her head and gives an “amen” anyway. She goes to church every Sunday for years, praying for the babies.

You are nineteen, and your mother calls you. You have just finished making poster board signs with your roommates. You throw on the “my body, my choice” T-shirt you tie-dyed the day before.

“What’re you up to today?” she asks in the same way she starts every conversation since you left for college.

You bend to zip up your backpack, your phone clutched in the crook of your neck.

“’Bout to head out to the Chicago Women’s March,” you say, already hearing the smile in your voice. This was the appeal of going to a college in a large city. The opportunity to be a part of something. To do something cool and exciting and important.

She huffs, “Don’t get caught up in all that liberal bullshit.”

You clutch the phone harder in your hand and turn down the volume so your roommates don’t hear the tinny voice. Your smile starts to slip.

“Huh? It’s not bullshit. Advocating for women’s reproductive rights is what I’m passionate about.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fine, I totally agree that we need better free health care and breast exams and all that. But then you’ve got the women out here having abortions left and right. They’re just selfish, plain and simple. And God forbid they stand by their decisions once they figure out they’re pregnant! I chose to have your sister, and I did,” she says.

You think about all the times she left over the years because being a parent is hard. You think about all the times she cried over not being able to give us new school clothes. You think about the years before you were born when it was just her and your sister and how she had to live in a trailer and work two jobs. You think about having to take out student loans in your grandma’s name because neither of your parents have a credit score over 600. You think of her still cleaning houses and talking about future plans that cost too much.

“And look how that turned out for you,” slams its way out of your throat before you even know what you are saying.

She hangs up. 

You are eighteen, and when the other stalls are finally empty, you open the package and pee on the little plastic stick. When the three minutes are up and you look down, your worst fear is confirmed. You forget how to breathe for a moment, and your lungs and throat gulp in huge, gasping breaths to compensate. You cry a deep, shaking cry that rattles your chest and pulls your lips from your teeth. You cry in a way you haven’t in years, not even when you were given Power of Attorney over your father and told to make all his medical decisions. Your twin had watched him do it and refused to take part in signing a DNR if the surgery to fix the hole in his heart wasn’t successful. You wonder if this is fear or the new hormones already enslaving your body.

You are twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two, and you have taken over a hundred pregnancy tests when your period is anything more than a day late. You wait in fear, and sometimes, if you admit it to yourself, hope for one of two outcomes depending on the year and where you are in your life. They always say negative.

You are eighteen and shove the palms of your hands against your eyes so hard you see bursts of light. The tears stop. You know immediately what you must do. You go back to your room, and sniffling the snot back up your nose, tell your roommates you are pregnant. They hug you while your back stays stiff and find a clinic near downtown.

You debate not telling your boyfriend, but you ultimately decide to take him on a walk and shove the used test zipped up in a plastic bag into his hand. Your hands shake and you can’t look at his face but you hear his sharp inhale. A pressure builds behind your eyes but you keep walking past the campus bookstore and an older couple walking hand-in-hand. He stops you in an alleyway with hands on your shoulders. He kisses your forehead and tries to make a joke to see you smile. It’s not that funny but you smile a little bit anyway to comfort him. He tells you that he’ll support you but, if he had to choose, he doesn’t want a kid. After the last two years of practicing your answer, you say without hesitation, “Yeah, it’s okay. I don’t want kids either.”

You are eighteen years old at your first doctor’s appointment at the abortion clinic. They say the fetus is too small to see on the monitor. You need to come back again in two weeks when it’s larger. You fantasize the reason they can’t see it yet is because it was all a dream. It was all a misunderstanding and you can go back to your normal life now. No need to come back to this clinic that only plays Judge Judy on fuzzy television sets. No need to see nervous women of all ages sitting on hard, plastic chairs waiting for their numbers to be called. If only, if only, if only. But you are three weeks pregnant.

You go back and they keep the monitor turned away from you, as if you would change your mind once you saw it. You know you won’t but you turn your head to look at the ceiling anyway. You wonder if this would be the appointment they’d give the other mothers, the happy, expectant mothers, the sonogram pictures they’d put in baby books to show to their children when they try to explain they were once in mommy’s belly. You don’t get any souvenirs at this appointment.

You don’t sleep that night. Instead, while your boyfriend sleeps soundly, pushing air past his slightly open lips, you push your stomach out as far as it can go and cradle the mound of flesh. You think about curly hair and a laugh that sounds like bells and eyelashes that’ll reach out to caress rounded, red cheeks. You feel tears leak out as you wonder if those doctors years ago were right, that this was some sort of miracle that may never happen again. You start to think that maybe you do want children and, if your mother knew of your pregnancy would surely say, it’s a gift from god. But you don’t believe in god and you’re the first person in your family to go to college. You will not turn out like your mother and work cleaning houses just to scrape by.

You are twenty, and you are getting the date 2/10/2017 tattooed on your ankle, a place easy enough to conceal. The meaning is still a secret to so many, but it means everything to you. It means the possibility of a life worth living, and the loss of a possibly different life. When people ask you about it, you say it’s part of an inside secret with a friend they wouldn’t understand.

You are eighteen, and you have handed over the four hundred dollars in exchange for two tiny pills. One you toss into your mouth and swallow dry without hesitation. The doctor is still talking and tells you you will need to take the second one in exactly twenty-four hours. They write you a prescription for codeine-covered Tylenol to help with the inevitable pain you will feel tomorrow. Your boyfriend nods but keeps checking the time on his phone. He has to catch a train home in an hour. You will do this all alone.

You are twenty-one, and the date on your ankle has found its way back to you again. It is the first year since you and your boyfriend broke up and you have not been alone on this day since it happened. You feel alone. You are drinking at a bar with your thirty-six-year-old coworker. The words in your mouth are jumbled as the alcohol soaks into your brain. You put your hand on his thigh and lean into him when you laugh. You see the look he gives you and you ask him, “My place or yours?” He tells you he has something for you to try and takes out a tiny ziplock baggie full of white powder. You have never done drugs before. You don’t even like smoking weed. But today is today and you are alone so you nod your head and follow him to the Uber waiting in the cold.

He lays out the cocaine in little lines and shows you the proper way to inhale it up your nose. You blow half of it away on your first attempt but try again. A taste akin to rubbing alcohol coats the back of your throat when you inhale just right. You buzz like a powerline.

You are eighteen, sitting alone in your dorm room. You have taken the second pill an hour ago. Mulan, your comfort movie as a child, is playing on your laptop but you can’t find comfort in it. The ham and cheese sandwich you just ate churns in your stomach. The bile makes its way up your throat and you climb down from your top bunk and run to the communal bathroom at the end of the hall. You are barely able to slide the lock shut and slam your knees against the cold tile floor before you dispel everything in your stomach into the awaiting porcelain bowl.

The nausea finally ceases but then the pain begins, a sharp, intense pain that radiates in your lower stomach and pushes out further.  The Tylenol you were told to take an hour ago does little to help. You cry. Quiet, soundless cries that refuse to leave your open lips. Blood soaks through your grey cotton pajama pants and you pull them down, the blood immediately starting to drip down your thighs. You force your shaking body back onto the seat and wipe aggressively with toilet paper at the lines of red congregating just above the knobs at your knees. You cry in earnest now, shoving your knuckles hard against your teeth so the girl in the next stall with the pink toenails doesn’t hear you and call the RA or police. She knocks against the stall door anyway. You cry harder and know it’s over now. Everything has left your body except for the pain.

The girl is one of your friends. She helps you to your room without creating attention. She gives you her polka-dotted heating pad and a glass of water. You spend the rest of the day curled in a ball in bed, hoping the bleeding will stop soon so you can forget about the bloody tissue leaving your body in clumps. You want to forget the entire thing. You want to forget what morning sickness feels like. Forget the fear of all your dreams and future plans twisted and plucked from you. More than anything, you want to call your mother so she can comfort you like she did when you were a sick child. You imagine her lips pressed against your forehead to check for fever, a quick hand swiping sweaty hair from your neck. You imagine her cradling you in her arms while you stayed warm and safe in her bed. But she wouldn’t understand. She would just cry and say she failed you. She would ask to pray for you and your soul. There would be no comfort. But you know, even as your body feels broken and hollow and your mind too full, you did the right thing. You touch a stomach that might never round and try to be okay with that. You are okay with that right now.

-Alison Matayosian

Alison Matayosian is a current student working towards her Masters degree in Writing and Publishing at DePaul University. She grew up in a small coastal town in South Florida and is currently freezing through the winters in Chicago, Illinois, with her cat, Romeo. Find her on Instagram @alisonpaige21